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NASA has changed the name of a facility located in Fairmont, West Virginia, to "Independent Verification and Validation Facility Katherine Johnson," in honor of NASA's retired mathematician.
Johnson, born in West Virginia, made mathematical calculations essential for running in space, including orbital trajectories for the first crewed flights, the lunar lander and the space shuttle. She was the subject of the movie 2016 Hidden figures.
"It is an honor that the main NASA IV & V facility is now named Katherine Johnson," said NASA IV & V program director Gregory Blaney in the press release. "It's a way for us to recognize Katherine's career and contributions not only during Black History Month, but every day, every year."
Johnson was born in 1918 and began his studies at West Virginia State at the age of 14. In 1952, he began working on the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, which later became NASA. NACA hired Black women as computers, as early as the 1940s, while they were working in an isolated area of the Langley Research Center, according to a passage from the book Broadband by Claire Evans.
Johnson was an important member of the space agency and NASA used his calculations to send astronauts into orbit and then onto the moon. The book and the adapted film Hidden figures details the history of Johnson and other mathematicians, including Dorothy Vaughan and Mary Jackson.
Women used to do most of the programming work because they were considered "forced labor," according to a 2016 article by Rhaina Cohen of The Atlantic. Changes in hiring practices in the 1950s and 1960s, such as the introduction of personality tests, led to these roles becoming more and more important to men.
Women, especially black women, still face abuse and under-representation in the sciences – these are still "hidden numbers". A study by the National Science Foundation found that 22,172 white men earned a PhD in physics between 1973 and 2012, compared with 66 only. Women and women of color in science continue to be subject to discrimination and sexual harassment, as well as retaliation for reporting problems they face.
In other words, representation and visibility are important. But much remains to be done before science has erased its racist and sexist past.
IV & V facilities, such as the one named for Katherine Johnson, were created after the Challenger disaster to ensure the smooth running of high-level missions and critical software while meeting certain requirements. This is the second facility named Johnson, the first being the Katherine Johnson Computer Research Facility at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
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